ArticlePloS one2022
A gateway conspiracy? Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories prospectively predicts greater conspiracist ideation.
Article in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Still very much dead and alive: Incoherence in conspiracism as a departure from Bayesian rationality.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Why existential threats increase conspiracy beliefs: Evidence for the mediating roles of agency detection and pattern perception.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Assessing the role of conspiracy beliefs in oncological treatment decisions: An experimental approach.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2025Article
- Pandemic or "Plandemic"?: The Mediating Role of Epistemic Justification Strategies in the Relationship Between COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs and COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Is there anything good about conspiracy beliefs? Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is associated with benefits to well-being.PloS one · 2025Article
- The role of conspiracy mindset in reducing support for child vaccination for COVID-19 in the United States.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A primary focus of research on conspiracy theories has been understanding the psychological characteristics that predict people's level of conspiracist ideation. However, the dynamics of conspiracist ideation-i.e., how such tendencies change over time-are not well understood. To help fill this gap in the literature, we used data from two longitudinal studies (Study 1 N = 107; Study 2 N = 1,037) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that greater belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories at baseline predicts both greater endorsement of a novel real-world conspiracy theory involving voter fraud in the 2020 American Presidential election (Study 1) and increases in generic conspiracist ideation over a period of several months (Studies 1 and 2). Thus, engaging with real-world conspiracy theories appears to act as a gateway, leading to more general increases in conspiracist ideation. Beyond enhancing our knowledge of conspiracist ideation, this work highlights the importance of fighting the spread of conspiracy theories.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.